PARKER — Before Legend shocked two Colorado powerhouses in the same day, Silas Meuli had a center-field chat with his late best friend, Tyler Harvey.
A star southpaw who graduated last year and was committed to UNLV, Harvey died in November after a battle with sarcoma. His death left a void with this spring’s Titans but also provided an accelerant.
So in the quiet moment at regionals last weekend, when Meuli — wearing Harvey’s No. 13 on his left jersey sleeve, and with his teammate’s initials and number tattooed on his left forearm — had a word with Harvey, the senior made his prayer count.
“The tattoo I have is a reminder to me every day that I play through him, play with him. We all do,” Meuli said. “In that talk last weekend, right before the first pitch of the first game, I just told him I would play with my cleats on fire and just have fun, because that’s truly what he did every game. No fear, and enjoy every moment — that’s how he’s inspired us to play.”
Legend, the No. 26 seed in the 32-team Class 5A playoffs, upset six-time state champion Rocky Mountain on the Lobos’ home field in the regional opener. Then the Titans dispatched 10-time champion and two-time defending champion Cherry Creek in the regional title game.
It marked the first time in the MaxPreps era (since 2008), and is believed to be the first time in Colorado baseball history, that those two juggernauts — CHSAA’s most successful big-school programs — were beaten by the same team in the same regional.
The Titans blanked Rocky Mountain 6-0 on a combined no-hitter by Colten Smith and Parker Klenovich, then topped Cherry Creek 7-3 after jumping out to an early lead and never looking back. In a season defined by No. 13, the Titans’ 13 combined runs over those two victories fit their incentive.
Message sent. Message received. And now Legend is on to state for the first time since 2017.
“This is bigger than baseball, it’s bigger than ourselves as individuals, it’s bigger than us as a team,” explained Harvey’s longtime catcher, senior Colton Brush. “Tyler’s memory just lets us play with a drive that makes us keep going and keep pushing for him, regardless of us being the underdogs.”
Improbable road to state
Legend’s uneven play this season underscores just how unlikely it is that the Titans are one of the eight teams left standing in the state. begins Friday at All-Star Park in Lakewood and All-City Stadium in Denver, where Legend takes on Broomfield in the opening round.
At one point, it appeared the Titans (14-11, 5-5 Continental League) might miss the playoffs for a second straight season. They lost six of eight league games during an off-kilter stretch in April that included four consecutive defeats. But head coach Scott Boyd said Legend started to find its identity during that period, before the Titans arrived at their volta on May 8.
That day, Legend beat rival Chaparral 8-4 in the league finale in a game where the Titans honored Harvey. All the players wore specialty alternate uniforms with Harvey’s name and number on the back. They laid his jersey on the mound in a pregame ceremony, and Harvey’s brother, Austen Harvey — a Legend assistant coach — threw out the first pitch.
Meuli homered in the win, and fought back tears as he was mobbed in the dugout by his teammates and embraced Boyd for a hug. The scoreboard told the rest of the story — it was lit up in 1s and 3s, the only two numbers that either team put up in their respective scoring innings. It was the omen before the omen of Legend’s 13-run total at regionals.
“There were moments earlier in the year where it seemed like our players were trying to do too much,” Austen Harvey said. “I don’t know if it was because they were trying too hard to play for Tyler or if certain individuals felt like they had to carry the team. But as the season has gone on, the guys have learned how to share that (emotional and performance) load together.
“That was solidified in that Chap game. And that’s a huge part of why we are where we’re at right now.”
As the Titans were riding what Meuli described as “a rollercoaster of emotions” throughout the spring, the Harvey family was consistently in the stands. While Austen was on the Titans’ bench, Tyler’s parents, Dru and Mike, made a habit of coming to the games.
Sometimes it was therapeutic. Sometimes it was hard, especially for Dru, whose grieving process has included lots of tears. But the Titans made it clear to her that they needed her at their games. Having the Harvey family watch them play was a certain kind of therapy for them, too. The family will be at the state tournament on Saturday.
“I had been going to the games and then I kind of stopped because I didn’t want to hurt the boys, especially Tyler’s friends, but then (Meuli) reached out and said, ‘But you don’t understand, Mrs. Harvey. When I look at the stands and see you, I see Tyler, so please come back,'” Dru Harvey said. “Since then, my husband and I try to go to as many games as we can to support the boys.”
Pitching with a tumor
Harvey was initially diagnosed at the end of his junior year, when doctors discovered a tumor on his thigh. At first, they thought it was benign, but further testing showed the pitcher had a rare type of cancer called
He started taking a pill that shrank his tumors. That worked for a few months before his sarcoma mutated. Harvey then went on a different pill that had the same type of success, but last spring, that also stopped working after another mutation.
That was early in Harvey’s senior season, but before he stepped away from the Titans to do radiation and chemotherapy, he wanted to end his high school career on his own terms. His final outing was a scene straight out of a movie: Pitching on painkillers while battling the effects of a tumor in his abdomen, Harvey dazzled, throwing four innings of one-run ball with seven strikeouts in an 11-1 win over Eaglecrest
The performance came after Harvey had to miss the Titans’ trip to Arizona, where he was scheduled to pitch in front of MLB scouts.
“Between his pitches, he would step back up on the mound, and you could see him pushing against his abdomen, and pushing (the tumor) to the side so that he could deliver the next pitch,” Austen Harvey said. “It was a great moment because, despite everything he was going through, we were all getting to see him doing what he loved to do.
“When he came off the field, I gave him a big-ole hug, and told him how proud I was of him … and there was obviously hope that he was going to keep being able to pitch.”
Harvey played his final game the next day, when Boyd slotted him into the lineup as a DH. He had an RBI. Afterward, he told his teammates he wouldn’t be playing the rest of the season.
The ensuing months were tough. The cancer spread, and new tumors kept popping up. But Harvey refused to stop fighting. He streamed all of the Titans’ games from the hospital. He didn’t yield hope that he would still go to UNLV. And as his condition worsened, he kept others in the forefront of his mind and started making plans to ensure his impact could continue, no matter what.
That’s where the idea for his foundation came — one with a unique acronym that reflected the pitcher’s resilient spirit.
“When Tyler would come home from the hospital after chemo or radiation or whatever treatment or tests he was going through that day, Austen would say to him, ‘Hey, how are we doing?’ And Tyler would look at him and say, ‘F— it, we ball,'” Dru Harvey said. “And so we came up with
An echoing legacy
By last October, the cancer had spread to Harvey’s brain, and he knew his time was short. He died on Nov. 1.
One of the pitcher’s final directives to his family, and one of the first orders of business for the FIWB 13 Foundation, was to take care of his teammates by gifting the varsity hitters with custom bats and the varsity pitchers with custom gloves.
The FIWB 13 Foundation held a casino night , and that — along with many individual donations — raised money for the gloves and bats. It also funded a scholarship established in Harvey’s honor, which awarded $1,300 this year to two Legend students who embodied Harvey’s spirit. One of the recipients was Meuli. The foundation is also using its funds for other baseball-related purposes, such as buying balls for Children’s Hospital so that the NICU could ink babies’ hands on the balls for Father’s Day. And the Harveys hope to increase the scholarships to three in 2027.
As Dru Harvey explained, the outpouring of support for the foundation — and the anecdotes she’s heard in the months since her son’s death — were affirmation that, as Boyd describes, Tyler was “the kind of player who changes your life not just as a coach and for his teammates, but for his peers as well.”
“We were at the memorial game (against Chaparral) and the mom of a special-needs student came up to us and said that her son was being bullied at a different school so they moved to Legend. Tyler walked up to him and was like, ‘Hey, come on with us. You’re one of our friends now,'” Dru Harvey said.
“… As a mom, what you don’t want is your child to be forgotten. Hearing stories like that, it really shows me that he won’t be forgotten, and it can soothe your soul a little bit.”
On the mound, the 6-foot-4 Harvey was an intimidating lefty with a low-90s fastball with run, a hard slider and an effective changeup. He was as competitive as ballplayers come. Off the diamond, he was equal parts funny, thoughtful and compassionate.
His impact has echoed like the sound of his heater popping the mitt, across Parker’s high school and club programs and beyond to college baseball, too. This spring, one of his former teammates, Eastern Illinois pitcher , took the coin off the bracelet from and put it in his glove. Another, Bethany Lutheran College infielder , wrote Harvey’s name on the back of his cleats.
And when it comes to this weekend’s state tournament, the Titans — who have never won a state title — believe anything is possible with No. 13 on their sleeves and Harvey’s determination in their hearts.
“We are playing with house money,” Meuli said. “State really just comes down to who gets hot at the right time. And coming off two big regional wins, I truly believe that it’s something that we can do — string together a few good games and then go win it all, which would be the ultimate goal. But no matter what happens, I think we’ve already made Tyler proud.”
